Your Not Really Green

Another in a not-so-regular series of posts highlighting nature's nature & 'ain't that odd'

Okay, are you really green if you drink bottle water! No. Most bottled water is simply municipal water, the same you get from your water utility. It is just psychological water -- made up by marketing, adding useless smell, taste, and filtering and maybe vitamins your really do not need to get through this wasteful delivery system. If you think gasoline is expensive, you should calculate your cost of water if you buy bottled water.

Bottled water, contrary to the bottler marketing spin, is a terrible carbon walker. It leaves a huge footprint. Keep in mind the plastic bottles, some with potentially harmful chemicals and the full circle of live -- if from wells all that new infrastructure. But, you have packaging, filling, petro for bottles, and lotsa petro for warehouse shipping, wholesale shipping, retail shipping and then the huge cycle after using the bottle -- recycle, landfill, and just a huge waste of petro, energy, and resources. You already have it without this huge carbon shoe! Think about your part in contributing to this definitely "not green" product.

Finally, in the case of Poland Spring, an original Maine water company now owned by a French company, should they be able to pump water from a local Maine resource and then ship the water any where they want without any kind of licensing, use, or reseller fee? Interesting how most people would say yes if it was oil. Most governing bodies do tax or collect some money for oil extraction. But drinkable water, one of the rarest and far more critical than global warming, is being taken without a tax or licensing fee. At least companies that "resell" municipal water, most likely pay a water bill! There is no tax levied by Maine on Poland Spring and they do not pay a water bill! But they may have 'paid' some municipal water district some small fee.

Now, ain't that odd.